Breaking infodemic: discovering SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

By December 2019, multiple cases of unexplained pneumonia were reported in some hospitals in the city of Wuhan, China. Since then, it had been confirmed that it corresponded to an acute respiratory infection caused by a new coronavirus that spread quickly, becoming pandemic in a very short time. On the other hand, this pandemic forced confinement for months, something unprecedented. In that time, millions of people went online for entertainment, education, etc. Consequently, the use of the Internet increased, bringing, on the one hand, online education, and entertainment on the Internet, ensuring social distancing; and on the other hand, it brought new new risks to human life, among them rumors. In this way and given the large number of publications that could denote the level of misinformation about COVID-19 and the impact it could have on global public health, various scientific publications were analyzed and identified from a bibliometric point of view. Potential relationships between the descriptors obtained from the bibliometric search were identified. The results were conglomerated into 5 clusters: Cluster 1, related to studies on access to information provided on COVID-19; cluster 2 shows the list of studies that have been carried out on the information on the COVID-19 vaccine, cluster 3 analyzes the different responses given by conspiracy theories, rumors and misinformation about COVID-19, the Group 4 shows cross-sectional and longitudinal research on COVID-19 and the information it provides to the health sector, and cluster 5 represents studies on scientific production and communication that have contributed to global health during the pandemic.